Home -> Law Blog Directory -> Legal Commentary Blogs -> LawPundit

Legal Commentary

: LawPundit

Young Voters are the Key to the Texas and Ohio Democractic Primary Elections for the 2008 Presidential Nominee

By Andis Kaulins

The future of America - as in any country - is dependent on its young people.

As noted at the Cincinnati Enquirer by Gregory Korte in Young voters getting noticed, the new young voter does not view the world so much in terms of political partisanship - thank goodness for that - but more readily reacts directly to a candidate's interactivity with the voter:

"If anything turns off young voters, it's the sense that the result of the election is predetermined before they go to the polls, said Abby Kiesa, youth coordinator for the Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement at the University of Maryland.

Red-state-blue-state partisanship and cable television shout-fests don't play well, either. Instead, younger voters value the interactivity that the Internet affords.

"They don't want to be part of a conversation where it's a debate, or where people are pushing opinions on them," Kiesa said. "They have a feeling of being overwhelmed by information. And so this generation has developed a built-in filter. They have this sensor. They feel like they know that people are trying to spin them, or not tell them the whole story. And they turn off if they feel like they're being spun."

It will be interesting to see what messages of the past several weeks the young voters view as "spin", what impact young voters will now play in the Texas and Ohio primaries, and if they make a significant difference in the outcomes of the elections. After all, it is THEIR future.

Full post as published by LawPundit on March 03, 2008 (boomark / email).